3 SEO Tips for Beginners. SEO 101. SEO for small businesses.

Are you new to SEO? Not sure what to do first, what SEO really means, or how it works? If so, you're not alone. Find out how to get started with SEO today to help your business be more visible online. Let me teach you how to get started with SEO. Small business owners, entrepreneurs, and solopreneurs can do great with SEO if they know how. Learn what works and what doesn't when it comes to using SEO to help your business grow. 

Transcript

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Hi, and welcome back to the podcast. Today I want to talk to you. If you are brand new, you're just starting to try to figure out SEO. You've heard it's important, but you really don't know. What it is, what it means, or even what to do first. And maybe you're a little embarrassed to admit that out loud because it feels like everybody else knows what it means and is actively doing it and you're like, I am not sure what it is and I don't wanna admit that. So let's start right here.'cause. You are not alone, and I want you to know that I have taught the free SEO class to over 10,000 people in the last like year, and I can tell year, year and a half, and I can tell you that about 50% of the people who come in. Are brand new. They're learning what to do. They're trying to understand how it works and what it does. Like they've heard that you have to do it to show up on Google, but most times they've also heard it's hard, it's complicated, it's overwhelming. It's above their pay grade. It's super technical and I want you to know. It's not honestly any of those things, so I am not technical at. All, not in the least. My background is in journalism. I have a bachelor's in broadcast journalism from the Cronkite School at a SU, and I have an MBA because I ended up spending my career in the corporate world rather than working in newsrooms. Even though newsrooms were my first love. I also really liked paying my bills, and I really liked having nights and weekends off and not going to work at one in the morning and things like that. That. Working in a newsroom, especially when you're young and you're new and you don't have the glamorous job, all those things are involved. Um, I did get the, you know, I, I did do it for a while and it was amazing and it was fun. But anyway, I digress. A story for another day. Sorry, still coughing a little bit. You know, it's just life. So when you're a beginner, you're new, you've not done it. Let's just talk for a minute about what it is and why it matters, because sometimes I think this is the part that maybe people don't fully get, because others don't really take the time to explain it. So search engine optimization is what SEO stands for. What it really amounts to is it's not some tactics that you do at the end. It's not just creating a title tag or a meta description. It's not just, you know. Writing something in the H one tag like it, that's not what SEO really is. Those are some tactics that we use, but SEO is actually. When we do it in the marketing world, when we do it in the agency world, it's a standalone department with a team, with lots of people at all different levels, and it's strategists and analysts and managers and project managers and all sorts of things. And the reason there are strategists and analysts is SEO is actually a marketing strategy. It is a way to really understand. How to connect with your ideal customer. It's you creating content for your audience and then helping them to find it by optimizing it for the search engine. So the way it works, at least in the corporate world where I come from, what we do is we have this big team and so. An account will have a manager, somebody like me. I was the senior director, so I oversaw everybody and I made sure the client stayed happy and wanted to stay with us because happy clients stay with you, and that's how an agency makes money underneath me. I had strategists. They were in charge of looking at the data and understanding the customer and the goals and the ideal customer we were trying to reach and their needs and what they were searching for. And like they put together the strategy with me saying, yes, this is good. Nope, we need to adjust, et cetera. So that was the strategy level. Then we had an analyst. I was looking at all the reports, who was putting together the recommendations and saying, I think we should do this based on this. Here's what I'm seeing. Here's this. Then we had people underneath there who were doing the research and doing the actual work and like looking to see what the competition was doing, and then we had writers and we had editors. We had all of that working together on it. Now, that does not mean that it has to be overwhelming and have multiple levels. Of people for you to do it, because I'm gonna be honest, I do all of those things for myself today, for my site, and I have for the past decade. So what you want to understand is it's not an afterthought. It's actually the core strategy for everything that you do online. When you understand how search engine optimization works, when you pair it with your content, you stop creating content that nobody ever sees. So if you feel called out there like. Oh gosh. Rachel, are you, are you in my head? Yeah. I create content. Nobody ever finds it. I need more traffic. The main reason you're not getting traffic is you're not doing SEO and it's not your fault. You probably just haven't really had somebody sit down and explain it and help you understand like what it is and what to do because you know, right now you're probably thinking or feeling something about it. Like I say the word SEO, and I'm. So curious, what is the first word that comes to mind for you? And if you would do me the hugest favor and DM me on Instagram and say, Rachel, I was listening to episode 1 79 today, and you asked me to tell you what I think or what I feel when I hear you say the word SEO. That would be so incredibly helpful because I'm really trying to understand. What it is that you think and feel about it, because I look at it and I'm excited because I know SEO changes everything for your business, but you may not know that just yet. You will in time. Stick with me here and you're gonna learn and understand, and you're gonna be like, oh Rachel, this is amazing. So SEO is a strategy. It's what we use. It's a specific skillset. That we use to really unearth the ideas and figure out what is it that we need to write about? And we do that in several ways. We look for content, topic ideas. What is it that our ideal customer is interested in? What do we write about? How do we position it? Now we're looking at. What keywords do I use that my website can potentially rank for on Google? And we're also looking at how do I need to write this for ai? Like what do I need to include specifically so that AI wants to show this to people as well? Because my friend, if you wanna get leads from Google and you wanna get leads from chat GPT and perplexity, and you wanna show up in the Google AI overviews and all of that, my friend. You gotta do SEO because that's what you are doing is making it easier for your search engines to find the information they're looking for on your website. So you're using all of these skills to create the right content, to find the right keywords. You're gonna learn how to write title tags and meta descriptions the way that they're supposed to be, because that's what we're going to see in the search results when somebody is searching Google for your business. So three tips you can get started with today. The first is just understand that. Search engine optimization is not something you do after the fact, okay? It is something that you start with and it is actually what you use to determine what content goes on your website, what you blog about, what you write about, how you format that. Like all of that comes into play. It can make your content. So that you are no longer creating content that nobody finds. So that's the first thing, is really understand that it is a strategy. It is a marketing strategy that is incredibly powerful. If you want to be found by people who don't know who your business is today, that's your first key. Now, as far as what we can do, you can start brainstorming keywords that are related to your business. Think about what people would search for, what they might ask, what they might say. I also want you to think about. What they might not wanna say out loud. So I had this conversation recently with a one-on-one client who is a life coach, and we'd been looking, we'd been, you know, really focusing on our keywords and really focusing on like life coaching for their specific niche. And there was a term that they were kind of against using. They had kind of shied away from it because. They didn't think that their ideal customer used it. And I challenged it just a little bit and I said, let's look at some of the tools and let's take a look and let's search. And sure enough people search for that term that they were shying away from. And I said, you know what? I know you're shying away from using it because people don't wanna admit that it's a problem. But looking at this search data tells me. It's a problem and people are searching for solutions and answers and help and guidance, and we're seeing it on Google. We're seeing it in chat, GPT. We're seeing it in Gemini. I really think you should consider using this word on your website and let's create a blog post about it. So they did that. It's brand new. I don't know yet how quickly it'll take off. Think about what are they saying out loud, but also what are they not saying? What are they maybe afraid to admit publicly that they have a question about, but they are searching for that. So you wanna think about that, like brainstorm. What kind of things would people use? Then you wanna kind of understand like, are these keywords that you can rank for? Are they ones that your site has a good chance? Like which one is the best one for you to use? And then choose that from there. Choose that, and then create a piece of content for it. Write a blog post. Optimize your website page using that keyword. If you wanna get an idea, if you have a chance of ranking for it, go into Google using an incognito browser window. One that will not have your personalization results.'cause you will see your website because. You go to your website, but me or somebody else who doesn't go to your website on a regular basis, won't see you ranking as high. So that's where the incognito browser window comes in. You're gonna go to the incognito browser window. You're going to then search for those different keywords that you're considering, and I want you to just take a look and see who's showing. Are they like me? Are they my competition? Are they giant sites? Because if they're really big sites, you're probably not gonna rank for it. But if they're similar to you and they're like your competition, there's a good chance that they may rank, it may work. Go ahead and do that. Write a title tag, write a meta description. Create some content. Optimize your image. If you're not sure what all of these things mean or how to do'em,'cause you're a beginner and it's okay. Get the beginner's guide to SEO. There's also a beginner's guide to AI based search, or ai, SEO. Both of those are on the website. Go to et marketing.com/freebies. Those are both there. Uh, join me in simple SEO content so you can learn exactly how to do this in that group program. I'll walk you through it, we'll look at it, we'll make sure you're choosing the right keywords that will open up again, um, probably in early June, so a little over a month. So plan on doing that and. We'll get you started and we'll take care of this and get you signed up and help you so that you can be more visible, you can generate more leads, and you can make more money in your business. So if you're brand new to SEO, don't feel bad. Just get started. Download that beginner's guide. Join me when I do the next launch. So the next time that you see I'm doing. The pop-up group and I'm doing the webinars and all of that, join me because that's a chance to really ask questions and get help. And you'll spend a whole week with me, you know, a few minutes each morning. You can ask questions, you can, you know, we'll have the lessons, all of that, and then plan on joining me in simple SEO content.'cause my friend, it does make life easier. You don't have to worry about trying to figure this out on your own. I can tell you right now, the people who try to figure it out on their own, generally spend about two years, year to two, one to two years, trying to figure it out. Trying to do it. Putting in the time and the effort, but it doesn't seem to quite work. And then they start to wonder will it work for their niche? And it's like, it's not that it doesn't work for your niche, it works for every niche. Like if you're sitting here wondering if it works for your niche, yes, it works for your niche. If you go to Google and you search for keyword related to your niche, and there is information available on websites. It to come in, join. Because when people try to learn it on their own, they make a lot of mistakes. They don't know, they don't understand, and they hurt themselves. And it actually takes you a lot longer because then you have to go back and you have to clean up some of the stuff that you did wrong. You have to make changes, et cetera. So if you are a beginner and you want to make this work the easiest as possible, just join me in the course and I will walk you through it. All right. That's it for today. I hope you found this very helpful. Again, do me a favor, DM me on Instagram and let me know what that first thought or feeling is that pops up. Like what's the first word that comes to mind when you hear somebody say, SEO, because that's so incredibly helpful for me. And then if you're willing, I'd love a rating, a review, a follow, subscribe, whatever your platform allows you to do that is super helpful. And it just is kind of like that warm fuzzy for me, so I know that. You're out there and you're listening and you care.'cause I've told, I've shared before, I love my podcast, but it also feels a lot like the days when I was on college radio and I was talking into the void and you didn't really know if anybody was listening or not. And realistically, they probably weren't because our station basically just played into the dorms. So let me know, is there anybody out there? Alright, I know'cause I can see my downloads, but I always love to hear from you. All right, that's it for today. Thank you. I will be back here next week. Bye for now.